Seliger stands up for rural priorities

AUSTIN — Last Monday, before the Texas Senate Finance Committee sent the transportation funding bill to the Senate floor for final passage, Sen. Kel Seliger made it clear why he would vote against it.

The measure Gov. Rick Perry put on the agenda of three special sessions and finally passed later that night included an amendment on port funding the Amarillo Republican didn’t like.

“I talked to the mayor of Dalhart the other day, and they have a railroad underpass that has been there since the ’30s or ’40s with a clearance of 13 feet, 7 inches, which is too low for modern-day freight,” Seliger told his colleagues. “It has been on the list of TxDOT (Texas Department of Transportation) for a number of years, but they get no firm answers from TxDOT.”

“I understand that it costs a lot more for a mile of highway on the I-35 corridor than it does in West Texas,” he said. “But what I see is that West Texas and rural Texas are standing in line behind the I-35 corridor and now moving behind the line again for ports.

“We can appropriate funds for port access, but to lengthen the line in the list of projects, I am absolutely opposed to that,” he added. “I think it is the wrong thing to do with the money.”

For Seliger, who represents the second largest rural district in the Senate, Monday’s “nay” vote was the latest frustration in advocating for rural issues in the 181-member Legislature where urban and suburban members are the overwhelming majority.

He was the only one from the Texas Panhandle/South Plains delegation to vote against House Bill 1.

“We have to spend a lot of time convincing our suburban and urban colleagues about rural concerns,” he said in an earlier interview. “I don’t want to call it being shortchanged, but did we get everything that we think we ought to get (this year)? No.”

However, his colleagues from the area see the treatment rural areas get differently.

“I think rural Texas has always been treated fairly in the Legislature,” said Sen. Robert Duncan, who represents the largest rural district.

The just concluded session was no different, Duncan, R-Lubbock, said.

“If you look at other areas in the budget, rural areas did fundamentally well, not that we couldn’t do better, but I think the rural areas did fairly well in the state budget,” he said.

“I think the school finance bill that we did started to clean up some of those issues. Certainly in transportation we did some things that will help some of the areas where we had roads damaged by heavy oil field and wind industry traffic.

“We put a lot more money into public education, we put more money into transportation and I think you are going to see, in my view, rural Texas compete very well with other rural areas around the country,” Duncan said.

Reps. Ken King and Drew Springer, who represent the largest rural districts in the House and campaigned mainly on rural issues, agreed.

“I am satisfied with how rural issues fared in the 83rd Legislature,” King, R-Canadian, said. “House Bill 5 alone (the school curriculum measure) is going to do a lot for rural schools.

“In terms of health care, there was money put back into health care, and rural health care is going to get part of it, too,” King said. “I don’t know if there is ever going to be enough money to address health care issues but yes, the budget worked. Some of the cuts made last session were restored, and money for rural health care is going to be the beneficiary.”

Springer, R-Muenster, gave other examples of what rural areas accomplished during the seven months the Legislature was in session.

“We had the fingerprint bill,” Springer said in reference to legislation that will allow rural residents applying for a concealed handgun license to get locally the old-type of fingerprints needed for background checks. Under current law, applicants must go to digital centers in urban areas, often more than 100 miles away.

“We passed local bills, those are the kinds of needs you need to pass,” he said in reference to a hospital for Jack County in the eastern section of his District 68 and legislation that benefited Floydada and Shamrock.

He also mentioned a bill that will allow counties without Democratic or Republican Party chairmen to hold primaries overseen by a party chairman from a neighboring county.

“You never get everything that you want — no one ever does — but overall, we did fairly well,” Springer said. “And what we didn’t get passed this session we will probably get it next session.”

Seliger said he also sees a lot of legislation favorable to rural areas but pushes for more, not only for the benefit of West Texas but for the entire state.

“We are not necessarily the economic engine of the state of Texas, but we are absolutely, extremely important,” he said in reference to rural Texas.